Then suddenly he became aware of Sally, who had appeared over the fold of the rise behind them, and asked irritably: "What is it now, old vrouw?"
"The Baas Clifford wants to speak with you, Baas Jacob. Messengers have come to you from far away."
"What messengers?" he asked.
"I know not," answered Sally, fanning her fat face with a yellow pocket-handkerchief. "They are strange people to me, and thin with travelling, but they talk a kind of Zulu. The Baas wishes you to come."
"Will you come also, Miss Clifford? No? Then forgive me if I leave you," and lifting his hat he went.
"A strange man, Missee," said old Sally, when he had vanished, walking very fast.
"Yes," answered Benita, in an indifferent voice.
"A very strange man," went on the old woman. "Too much in his kop," and she tapped her forehead. "I tink it will burst one day; but if it does not burst, then he will be great. I tell you that before, now I tell it you again, for I tink his time come. Now I go cook dinner."
Benita sat by the lake till the twilight fell, and the wild geese began to flight over her. Then she walked back to the house thinking no more of Heer Meyer, thinking only that she was weary of this place in which there was nothing to occupy her mind and distract it from its ever present sorrow.
At dinner, or rather supper, that night she noticed that both her father and his partner seemed to be suffering from suppressed excitement, of which she thought she could guess the cause.
"Did you find your messengers, Mr. Meyer?" she asked, when the men had lit their pipes, and the square-face--as Hollands was called in those days, from the shape of the bottle--was set upon the rough table of speckled buchenhout wood.
"Yes, I found them," he answered; "they are in the kitchen now." And he looked at Mr. Clifford.
"Benita, my dear," said her father, "rather a curious thing has happened." Her face lit up, but he shook his head. "No, nothing to do with the shipwreck--that is all finished. Still, something that may interest you, if you care to hear a story."
Benita nodded; she was in a mood to hear anything that would occupy her thoughts.
"You know something about this treasure business," went on her father. "Well, this is the tale of it. Years ago, after you and your mother had gone to England, I went on a big game shooting expedition into the interior. My companion was an old fellow called Tom Jackson, a rolling stone, and one of the best elephant hunters in Africa. We did pretty well, but the end of it was that we separated north of the Transvaal, I bringing down the ivory that we had shot, and traded, and Tom stopping to put in another season, the arrangement being that he was to join me afterwards, and take his share of the money. I came here and bought this farm from a Boer who was tired of it--cheap enough, too, for I only gave him £100 for the 6,000 acres. The kitchens behind were his old house, for I built a new one.